The Promise Likes Trauma

59E59 Theaters hosts Douglas Maxwell's U.K. import

First-grade teachers deal with all kinds of scary stuff: pants-wetting, tantrums, parents. Helping a first-grader from halfway across the worldone who has suffered horrors her classmates cant imagineis the even-scarier scenario that Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell depicts in his new piece, The Promise. The solo drama, performed by Joanna Tope, starts out edifyingbut, after tackling alcoholism, racism, and genital mutilation, its lessons get confused.

Maggie is a seasoned teacher with a drinking habit and a penchant for off-puttingly lewd remarks. Summoned from retirement to substitute-teach in a London school, she meets Rosie, a mute, six-year-old Somalian immigrant. Representatives of the local Somalian community have scheduled Rosie for a public exorcism after recess (anyone who wont talk must be harboring devils). Uncannily drawn to the young stranger, Maggie intervenes in the degrading ritualonly to learn that her assumptions about Rosie might be the most degrading thing of all.

Niall Walker

London meets Somalia.

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If The Promise had stopped there, it might have been a thoughtful meditation on cultural relativism (Topes energetic performance helps). But Maxwell crams in every possible trauma, dwelling on Maggies guilt-soaked past and her booze-soaked present; Rosie ends up less like a character and more like a queasy symbol of abuse. Teetering between overly-PC and inadvertently offensive, the play, like Maggie, follows good intentions to murky results.